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Why super-gonorrhoea is spreading and may soon be untreatable

Evolving resistance

Maurizio de Angelis/Science Photo Library

THE drugs don’t work. England’s public health agency has discovered more cases of gonorrhoea that are resistant to nearly all antibiotics.

The bacteria behind gonorrhoea readily acquire genes for resisting drugs and so from 2012, UK patients were given two antibiotics at once – azithromycin pills plus a ceftriaxone injection – so if bacteria acquired resistance to one, they would be killed by the other. Gonorrhoea that resists azithromycin was detected in Japan in 2013, and clinics in northern England reported 16 people with similarly resistant infections in 2015. That means the bacteria are only killed by ceftriaxone, and there is no backup antibiotic to kill them off if they develop resistance to it.

One option may be to increase doses of the existing drugs, or go back to old drugs that might work against gonorrhoea. Researchers are trying to find out if a vaccine against meningitis B, caused by related bacteria, might cause some cross-immunity to gonorrhoea.